I felt like I was in a time-warp yesterday, running alongside the demonstrators, shooting video, as the protesters shouted “The whole world is watching!” (yes, that oldie!), challenging the police who were blocking their way. But this time it wasn’t D.C. but the Copenhagen cops, and the building to be stormed was not the Pentagon, but the Bella Center — a gussied-up seventies edifice where the UN Climate Conference (Cop 15) is taking place.

“The whole word is watching!” soon gave in to “Ho, ho, ho, ho — Bella Center here we go!” that reminded me rather much of “Ho, Ho, Ho Chih Minh — Viet Cong is gonna win!” There was also a bit of “The People United will never be defeated” (El pueblo unido jamas sera vencido) from the Hispanic contingent.

The demonstrators never made the Center. The cops blocked them. Shortly after I saw a couple of protesters climbing power poles. Someone ran past me, his face contorted from pepper spray. I heard screaming and now everyone was running backwards. Me too.

But nothing much happened. The Danish cops were pretty tame and the protesters, retreads that they were, weren’t especially good at playing the old game of bait-the-police. I kept thinking of Marx’s famous rewrite of Hegel — the one about history being replayed the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. I don’t know about tragedy, but there certainly was plenty of farce to go around — demonstrators dressed as clowns, middle-aged Brazilian ladies in tiger suits and Amazonian false breasts promising to save the rain forests, an old guy from Estonia pushing a model elephant he had constructed entirely of recycled trash. These were Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night gone globalist, and boy, did they appear useless. What will they all do when it’s over and they have to go home?

Inside the Bella Center things were scarcely better. Cop 15 is a bifurcated event. Outside are the noisy demonstrators who think — or say they think — capitalism is the root of all evil. Inside are mixed bags of socialist and capitalist poo-bahs negotiating the extension of an agreement — the Kyoto Protocol — that no one ever adhered to in the first place.

It’s the UN at its purest.

Grown-up (jacket and tie) versions of the outside demonstrators and self-serving bureaucrats manipulating large amounts of cash, under the rubric of “climate debt” — the money supposedly owed by energy-belching developed nations to the less fortunate. (Many of the “less fortunate” seem to be staying in my hotel replete with large entourages, security, luxury limousines, etc.)

The number on the table they are jousting over at the moment is a 100 billion dollar international fund through 2020, no small sum for an unproven theory (AGW). The U.S. now appears to be behind it, although there is an element of charade in all this. (The Chinese won’t accede to the transparency demands and everyone else knows it.) Meanwhile, several of the delegates I’ve talked to worry that all this talk of global warming Armageddon is distracting the world from genuine existing and verifiable problems — such as potable water, malaria, etc.

Be that as it may — and even though there is still a lot of bickering over the hand-outs … er, budget — this city is about to be descended upon by some 115 world leaders. One of them, Hugo Chavez, is already here, evidently to great acclaim. I missed his speech yesterday (somehow I’m not on the invite list), but I will take one for the team today and go hear Chavez speak off campus at a place called Valby Hallen. He won’t be alone. Accompanying him on the program are Raul Castro, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, Eva Morales of Bolivia, the Foreign Minister of Ecuador and the recently deposed president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya. (Wasn’t he supposed to be in the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa?) Anyway, it’s a veritable rogue’s gallery of the Latin American left. Tickets are on a first come, first served basis with no assigned seating (Heaven help me!). I told you I was taking one for the team.

UPDATE: Oops, now I see I have a conflict — a demonstration has been called in front of the Danish Parliament at 6PM to protest Ahmadinejad’s arrival at the conference. How can I be two places at once? So many despots — so little time!

UPDATE II: Hot news here is that Russians too have been reading the “Climategate” leaks. From Kommersant:

Climategate has already affected Russia. On Tuesday, the Moscow-based Institute of Economic Analysis (IEA) issued a report claiming that the Hadley Center for Climate Change based at the headquarters of the British Meteorological Office in Exeter (Devon, England) had probably tampered with Russian-climate data.The IEA believes that Russian meteorological-station data did not substantiate the anthropogenic global-warming theory.

33 Comments, 33 Threads

1.
Victor Erimita

I think Hugo Chavez gave the most honest speech I have heard of at Copenhagen. He cut right to the chase. And with all his other “socialist” thugs pals, it’s easier for everyone to see what the game really is.

It is really great when the most incompetent leaders in the world are scheduled to speak in front of the most incompetent world organization. Sometimes I think that the US should pull out of the nuke treaty and use first strike against socialist jerks. We can get rid of a lot of carbon if the EU is eliminated! They never paid us for saving their butts anyway! This, of course, makes as much sense as the AGW scaremongering liars! The UK should be proud. It now owns the biggest scientific lie in history- Galileo has been surpassed by a bunch of socialist morons!

Roger, you’re having way too much fun with this – cool it! Cheez, don’t know how the invite to Chavez got screwed, you should call the White House social sec and get it fixed. Ballons; Wheres’ Da Freaking Balloons!!

Great to hear things are coming apart in Copenhagen. Hope you are having a terrific time and perhaps you snuck Ron Rosenbaum in via the forward cargo hold. He must be on a respirator by now with the way things are collapsing in the liberal world.

There is something else that must be added: the voters of many of these countries are appalled—and outraged! Does anybody really believe that Obama will get both houses of Congress to approve his promises of our tax dollars? Are the Democrats that eager to commit political suicide?

This waste of time currently occurring in Copenhagen is something of a last hurrah. These participants might as well enjoy the free food and drink while they can. It is doubtful that there will ever be another one of such scope held in the future.

Of course Obama will go to Copenhagen. Where else will he receive his weekly dose of adulation he so craves . He certainly is not receiving much at home. His far left synchophants are pissed off, independents have given up on him and the right is telling everyone “I told you so”. The climate prostitutes of Copenhagen will feed his ego.

Hey David public sentiment here in Australia is shifting fast – people are telling our PM not to come home! As all this implodes it wont be pretty and here they are desperate, utterly desperate to get this new world order signed! Yet NASA says now the upper atmosphere is cooling fast as the sun slumbers – this is the real danger we face!

Roger, your much anticipated dispatches paint a vivid picture of the bumbling enviro-diletantes outside and the three ring circus inside. Thank you for exposing this farce, the world needs more like-minded word masters like you!

Excellent report! And FUNNY! One weapon we have and need to employ fully against these bozos is HUMOUR. They might have scorn and smugness but they have no sense of humour. Although the threat they pose is serious the fewer people who take them seriously the less sway they will have in the free world. Looking forward to more!

Did anyone who traveled to Copenhagen for this mess pay for their own ticket?

It’s difficult to even estimate the amount of “public funds” being run through like a hot knife through soft butter….imagine the expense accounts, the cash….and none of it the actual possession of the people who are spending it…it’s all grants or “government” money….in other words, money taken from people who aren’t there to be lavished on those who are there.

Government doesn’t have any money. That’s why they keep taking ours.

And now Mrs. Clinton has offered them a few hundred billion more. May as well. What difference does it make any more.

I decided today that when I send our sons and their families’ Christmas packages, I’ll enclose a check to each of them made out for—oh, something like $500,000,000,000. Works for Hilary. Don’t know why it shouldn’t work for me.

Why is it you and I get in trouble with our banks if we write checks that aren’t covered with MONEY in our accouant, but that process doesn’t apply to obama or Mrs. Clinton or all the other liars.

This is beyond the O-zone. Beyond falling down the rabbit hole. These people, their goals, their methods, are just plain evil.

“[...] I kept thinking of Marx’s famous rewrite of Hegel — the one about history being replayed the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. I don’t know about tragedy, but there certainly was plenty of farce to go around [...]

This adage also can be used for introducing the Saturnalias that most of the UN-sponsored gatherings really are -

I want someone to PROVE to me that they absolutely KNOW what amount of CO2 (I say the more, the merrier so long as we don’t surpass 2000ppm) is the optimum for the earth. NO ONE CAN. Absolutely no human being can claim they know the optimal amount of co2 for this planet. It is __________ (fill in the blank) insane. We have NO clue. Actually, we do know that plants thrive in 1000ppm, and we have had much more. So, they are trying to cap it and sell it as if someone actually created the planet and made guidelines of the optimal gasses.

How do we know we are not at a low? Releasing the gasses that were once on the planet may be the best thing. Surely, this would NOT melt all the ice. And, as far as I can tell, the polar ice is already accounted for, seeing how it is floating–displacing the amount already.

And seeing how the avg antartic temps range from -40C inland to -10C on the coast, even giving a +2C rise wouldn’t sustain the fearmongers worst assumptions.

Somebody please tell our gov that it is OVER. CO2 is NOT a pollutant even if it were the main cause of warming. It is natural and that is that. Obama IS invested in Carbon Trading… how telling? In fact, he set up an organization for it in Chicago… These are the ‘leaders’ we have today. Does he go on TV and say “My income will increase greatly with CapTrade, even though your life will become less…”? H NO. The guy is as big a fraud as his Jennings FISTING king, and AGW.

WE ARE DONE. NO money for any other country or the UN. It is insane. We are NOT rich, we are bankrupt. Look out for our country first and do not listen to the hype.

Joseph: Well, who knows about the Estonian? (Doesn’t Ryanair offer ridiculously cheap fares? I’ve read stories about Brits flying to Spain for $50. Of course, that sort of cheap mass air travel is precisely what environmentalists hate – when other people do it.)

Folks on the dole and trust fund kiddies make up a pretty high percentage of the eternally indignant types who attend lefty rallies, protests, etc.

P.J. O’Rourke once said to a friend “Why is it that when the left is angry about something, they can turn out an army of kooks and when the right is upset, you have 3 guys standing on a street corner waving an American flag?” The friend replied, “Because we have jobs.”

One of the wonders of the tea party rallies is that so many normal people with regular jobs showed up. Not your usual protesters.

I must take issue with your characterization of “an old guy from Estonia pushing a model elephant he had constructed entirely of recycled trash.” How do you know he was from Estonia? Did he present credentials? This strikes me as a slanderous caricature.

Estonia is a model free market state ( with even a flat tax) after 50 years of stultifying Soviet political oppression and environmental degradation. Do you have any way of knowing who the “old guy from Estonia” really was? Possibly he was an actual Estonian, perhaps insane, or maybe a former communist. He could also have been a Russian citizen of Estonia of whom we have far too many, due to illegal population transfers during the Soviet occupation, and most of whom are greatly disgruntled at their loss of privilege and prestige after the demise of the Soviet Union.

I don’t know, but I suspect neither do you. I like your work, Roger, and Pajamas Media. But I feel I must stand up for my poor embattled people who, because of wars and executions and deportations to Siberia, and emigrations to the west, today number less than a million people.

If you’ve never heard of it before, watch and listen to the “Singing Revolution.”

You are probably correct about how cheap it is to travel from Estonia to Copenhagen, but what about those tiger stripped ladies from Brazil?

Your neighbor, 36. Lee Chard, feels that no real Estonian would be caught dead protesting global warming except maybe those damn fake Estonians with Russian last names. Kind of like Native Americans feel about us Europeans here who call ourselves natives. Of course I believe in the American way, if you are born somewhere you belong there no matter the circumstances, but what do I know.

As for P J O’Rourke, I really like most of his stuff especially “How to Drive Fast on Drugs While Getting Your Wing-Wang Squeezed and Not Spill Your Drink” or his prescription for winning in Afghanistan, a pyramid of skulls.